SOMETIMES I WISH THAT I COULD FREEZE THE PICTURE AND SAVE IT FROM THE FUNNY TRICKS OF TIME…

When casting about for a title for this blog post that song by Abba kept popping into my head – the one that goes ‘slipping through my fingers all the time I try to catch her every minute’. I decided to roll with it and here we are.

Emily is 7 months old today – I really love this age and feel incredibly lucky to be doing this baby thing a second time around. One thing I really struggle to do though is take enough pictures. Does anyone else have this? I’m very conscious of trying to be ‘in the moment’ with the girls – both in a nice, savouring-the-memories way and also in a not so nice ploughing through the drudge work way and I seldom reach for the camera during our day to day lives. Another reason I don’t take enough photos (and I feel so silly just typing this) is that I really like everything in the background of my pictures to be perfect, even the ones that aren’t destined for the internet. It irks me so much to have clutter and mess (I’m looking at you, wires!) in the backgrounds of photos that it actually stops me from taking them altogether but I realise that’s crazy. I don’t want our family photos to exist in a vacuum and look back on what might as well be album after album of stock photography. When I occasionally rummage through my old baby photos I love seeing my childhood home in all it’s 1980’s, un-styled glory. I have a feeling that it’s this more unguarded side of life that my children will want to see more of when they grow up so I’m going to try to relax my own, self imposed photo rules and capture more of the every day. The real every day.

I’m hoping that by writing this down I’ll hold myself a bit more accountable and capture these precious days in their messy, imperfect glory. Are you good at documenting your families daily life? Do you have any hints or tips?